Life of Bartolomé Salvador de Solórzano: Some further evidence

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The Accounting Historians Journal Vol. 16, No. 1 June 1989
Esteban Hernández Esteve BANCO DE ESPAÑA
THE LIFE OF BARTOLOMÉ SALVADOR DE SOLÓRZANO: SOME FURTHER EVIDENCE
Abstract: Until very recently almost nothing was known about the life of Bartolomé Salvador de Solórzano, the author of the first Spanish treatise on double-entry bookkeeping. This paper presents the results of further research on this subject and complements the findings presented in a previous paper by Hernández Esteve. A more complete picture of the life of Bartolomé Salvador de Solór-zano can now be drawn. On the whole there is now evidence regarding aspects such as birth, baptism, parents, godparents, relatives, profession, business, residence, condition, travels, partners, death, etc. Some details on the publication and distribu-tion of his book also are known.
Despite his important contribution to Spanish culture and business, until recently very little was known about the life of Bartolomé Salvador de Solórzano, the first Spaniard to write a treatise on double-entry bookkeeping. The treatise appeared well after — 96 years after — the publication of Pacioli's Summa de arithmetica, geometria, proportioni e proportionalità. Nevertheless, in terms of the depth, coherence and exactitude with which he treated his subject, the work of Bartolomé Salvador is one of the most important contributions to the field in the whole of the sixteenth century. Indeed, it was Henry Lapeyre's opinion [1955, p. 345] that the treatise, Libro de caxa y Manual de cuentas de Mercaderes y otras personas con la declara-ción dellos, compared favorably with the best Eurpoean works on the subject published during the period 1494 to 1590, the year of the treatise's own publication.
EARLY EVIDENCE
It is known for certain that Bartolomé Salvador was born in Medina de Rioseco, an old Castilian town that was the site of one
This paper is dedicated to Francisco Javier Luna Luque, one of the first to study the work of Bartolomé Salvador de Solórzano and to his distinguished wife who shares his enthusiasm for research into accounting history.